During the long May weekend the weather in Karkonosze wasn't nice. In Poland we say: "the weather is squared". The sunny moments with almost summer sun were interspersed with torrential rain and cold wind. In short: "something nice for everybody".

One of the mornings said hallo to us with almost October weather. Somehow we had to utilise our children's energy. Mountain trips weren't possible. Fortunately, we found Glass Factory Julia near Szklarska Poręba, which we decided to visit.

Our first contact with the place was disturbing. The crowds of people milling around the building, the buses and cars filling up the decent-sized carparks and a lot of children messing around frightened us a bit. Actually, it turned out that the only difficult thing was finding a free space in the car park. The crowd of adults and children were efficiently directed by the Glass Factory staff. The checkout line, tickets, the set times for visiting the Factory, the shop, guide and interpretive walk – everything was well thought out and very well organized.

Visiting the Factory is possible only in the care of a guide in 20-person groups. The groups enter the factory every 30 minutes. If there is an exceptionally large group of people, visiting starts every 15 minutes. Although there were a lot of people ahead of us, we waited only 45 minutes, which was exactly as much time as we needed to see the products in one of the shops with coloured glass (visiting the factory finishes in the shop with white glass) and drink an excellent hot chocolate and coffee in the Lily-white Café. The cakes and dessert served in the local glass looked appealing and were very tasty. The only minor flaw was the small amount of chairs in the café, but here we were also lucky.

The interpretive walk took place inside the factory floor where we could see each stage of manufacture: blowing and moulding of glass mass, glass grinding, decorating, quality control and packing delicate works of art. Each thing made in the Glass Factory and sold in one of the three shops is handmade. The guide spoke succinctly and was so interesting that every visitor - even quite young ones - was fascinated.

Obviously, the most interesting thing was the forming of gleaming ductile glass at the hot forge. Apart from basic products like vases, jugs, cake stands, decanters and glasses, we saw artistic works of sculpture made from ductile glass. The master created dainty flowers that were so beautiful it was difficult to believe they were made from glass. The young visitors could also feel like a master of glass. For them The Glass Factory had training workshops: for the youngest (from 5 years old) a "Mini Glass Factory", for slightly older kids (from 7 years old) "Painting on glass", and for the oldest (from 9 years old) "Carving on glass". Because of the limited availability and huge interest, you have to book the tickets in advance.

The Glass Factory's products are sold outside Poland. You can only buy 30% of them in one of three shops: one online and two in the Glass Factory. I think that even if you don't like lily-white glass, you can find something stunning for yourself. On sale you can find engraved and honed glass, i.e. the kind of glass from grandma's cupboard: quite simple, with clean lines and made from quality material.

We were impressed by the Glass Factory where you can see a bit of history, beauty and industrial process at the same time in a well-judged and well organized package.

I recommend it!

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The pictures come from FB of the Glass Factory Julia